Big companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google are embracing health-tracking apps. Their goal is to remake health care by collaborating on new tools for consumers, patients, doctors, insurers and medical researchers. According to CB Insights, in the first eleven months of the year, ten of the biggest tech companies in the US were apart of health care equity deals worth $2.7 billion.
Apple has focused on its consumer products, Microsoft on online storage and analytics services, and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, on data.
A second year medical student in Manhattan saw an app for a new heart study that was obviously featured. He registered for the heart study right away and promoted it on Twitter saying it was part of a breakthrough in health care.
Many companies including IMB, Intel, and Microsoft have provided technologies and services to the health care industry. But they are now focused on creating and investing in technologies for doctors, patients, and consumers.
Amazon was one of the investors in a financing round for Grail, a cancer detection start-up. Apple obtained Beddit, a maker of sleep-tracking technology. And Alphabet, acquired Senosis Health, a developer of apps that use smartphone sensors to monitor certain health signals.
Alphabet has a research unit called Verily Life Sciences that are dedicated to creating new tools to collect and analyze health data. They created a new device called The Verily Study Watch, with sensors that collect data on heart rate, gait, and skin temperature. This watch will be used in a new research study called Project Baseline. Participants in this study will use the Verily Study Watch and sensors in their bed to gain data that will help researchers get a more detailed picture of the progression of diseases like cancer.
There has been a lot more developments from these huge technology companies. Apple created Apple ResearchKit, for health researchers. Microsoft announced an initiative, Healthcare NeXT to create products for medical providers and patients using artificial intelligence and cloud services like speech recognition.
Social Media Platforms like FaceBook made it more appealing for pharmaceutical companies to advertise.
There is still so much potential for these tech companies to expand on the health care platform. Cosmo Insurance Agency’s goal is to provide quality health insurance like these companies. We hope that these new platforms increase health care access and keep everyone aware of their health.
source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/technology/big-tech-health-care.html
